The New York energy analysis, led by Mark Jacobson of Stanford University, has become a popular talking point among foes of expanded natural gas drilling in the state. When it was published, I noted that it was more akin to a thought experiment than a roadmap, given that the analysis did not consider real-world sources of friction from economics and politics.

The new paper describes a mix of technical and policy factors that the authors say were skirted by Jacobson et al.

Read on for a summary of the main points by Nate Gilbraith, the lead author, and Paulina Jaramillo, who directs the school’s RenewElec Project, which works to identify and overcome hurdles to integrating renewable energy sources like wind and solar panels into electricity grids:

The general message of our response is threefold. First, reliability is an important aspect to consider when designing future energy systems. Current energy systems provide much more than the total amount of energy we consume – these energy systems meet power demand (the rate we consume energy) and we, among many others, argue that potential energy systems must measure up in terms of meeting power demand. While the distinction between energy (e.g., the amount of chemical energy in a gallon of gasoline) and power (how fast the chemical energy in that gallon of gasoline is consumed) seems like a topic only engineers would quarrel over, this distinction is crucial for energy systems. Constraints on the rate at which energy can be provided are extremely common in energy systems. For example, only so much natural gas can be pushed through a given sized pipe and only so much electricity can be transmitted thought a given sized transmission line. It is important to recognize these constraints because energy systems provide or enable almost every aspect of a modern economy, and the consequences of an energy systems failure (e.g., a power outage) are dramatic.

A second issue relates to cost. A complete energy transition to water, solar and wind would require significant infrastructure investments in order to guarantee a reliable supply of energy. While Jacobson et al. provided a high level discussion about the economics of a wind, water, and solar energy system, they did not provide enough detail on the methods and data they used to provide a convincing argument that the transition will not be extremely costly. The absence of a cost estimate for the proposed hydrogen infrastructure was a striking example of the oversimplifications we believe were made.

Finally, energy systems must balance the value of energy with the consequences of energy production and consumption – is a change feasible? While accounting for the likely and potential impacts of global climate change should be taken into account when making energy systems decisions, many other considerations also exist. A thorough accounting of how such considerations interact is key to planning our future energy systems. A salient example can be seen in the Adirondacks. (You recently highlighted how the Adirondacks represented a balance between human and natural systems.) [link]

The people of New York have decided they value the (known and unknown) benefits that a wilderness landscape provides. We argue that we should at least consider the impacts of developing this wilderness landscape relative to the reduced risk of damages to other human and wilderness landscapes (Jacobson et al. state that New York’s energy transition is necessary to prevent a collapse of the Arctic ice sheets). If Jacobson et al. did make such considerations, they were not clear (i.e., discussed) in the paper.

In a recent paper published in Energy Policy by Jacobson et al. (2013) [link], the authors claim that it is “feasible” that the entirety of New York State’s (NYS) energy consumption could originate from wind, water, and solar sources by 2030. The current paper is similar to several papers that the authors previously published regarding the use of wind and solar resources to meet global energy demands (Delucchi and Jacobson, 2011; Jacobson and Delucchi, 2011). Like Trainer (2012, 2013), we suggest that the analysis performed by Jacobson et al. (2013) is insufﬁcient to provide a reasonable defense of this claim. In an energy systems context, three metrics have emerged to evaluate the feasibility of proposed policies or actions: technical potential, economic potential, and social potential. The technical criterion outlines the limits of what current or likely future technology could achieve given no other constraints (e.g. ignoring the cost of the technology). The economic criterion limits action to what is economically viable; for example, in many cases only actions that provide a positive net present value are likely to be adopted. Finally, the social criterion poses additional constraints and considerations due to society’s values.

The feasibility analysis performed by Jacobson et al. (2013) is incomplete and scientiﬁcally questionable from both the technical and economic perspectives, and it implicitly assumes, without sufﬁcient justiﬁcation, that social criterion would not produce even larger feasibility barriers.

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By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. Dot Earth was created by Andrew Revkin in October 2007 -- in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship -- to explore ways to balance human needs and the planet's limits.